Perception vs. Reality: There’s More Alcohol in That Drink Than You Think, and It’s Killing You

How often have we heard, “I only had a couple of drinks?” The reality is, we really don’t know. When you go to order food, you have calorie content, fat content, and sodium content. There’s generally an understanding about what that means. However, ordering an alcoholic beverage is a different story. In fact, serving sizes for drinks vary from location to location and strength of a drink may depend on the bartender, therefore how much alcohol is in that one drink is unknown. In addition, even that one drink has more of an effect on your body than you may realize.

During the pandemic, we began to see the normalization of alcohol consumption earlier in the day from home – with people either making drinks themselves or having them delivered to their doorstep. Unfortunately, this type of drinking that many perceive to be normal is not healthy. In fact, the CDC reports that excessive alcohol use now kills 140,000 people annually – that’s 380 people per day in America.

As defined by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), for women, low-risk drinking is no more than 3 drinks on any single day and no more than 7 drinks per week. For men, it is defined as no more than 4 drinks on any single day and no more than 14 drinks per week. But if you asked people on the street what a “standard drink” is, I doubt most could tell you. Sure, people would say that a bottle of beer would serve as one drink, but then some beers have greater alcohol per volume (ABV) or alcohol content – some significantly so - than others. In addition, that pint glass you get at the craft brewery is also 50 percent larger than a bottle of beer. Then, how much wine is considered a standard drink? What about hard liquor? Is a margarita considered “one drink,” or is it strong enough to count as three?

What is “standard?” A standard beer is a 12-ounce regular beer with 5% alcohol – so that pint of craft beer is already well beyond the NIAAA recommendation. For hard liquor, a 1.5-ounce shot of 80-proof hard liquor is a serving, meaning a mixed drink usually contains more than one serving. A 5-ounce glass of table wine is also a serving, but most restaurant glasses are significantly larger. This guide at Rethinking Your Drinking can help visualize exactly how much alcohol a person is consuming.

Alcohol begins to affect your body immediately.

While many people understand that there are immediately dangers of being intoxicated such as driving under the influence, many don’t realize the effects on their bodies. Alcohol increases your health risk for a variety of conditions from the very first drink. The harm increases exponentially as you drink more. Binge drinking, daily drinking, and long-term use are all behaviors that increase your health risk.

Alcohol affects every organ in your body. Its toxic effects are well known, and the more you drink, and the longer you’ve been drinking, the more toxic it can become.

Its effects include:

Alcohol is legal, and therefore people underestimate its potential for harm. However, alcohol is the third-leading preventable cause of death in the United States, ahead of opioid overdoses (including those from fentanyl), automobile crashes, and gun violence. For most people, the dangers of alcohol outweigh the benefits. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) says there is no safe amount of alcohol. We must continue to raise awareness about this issue, help people understand just how much alcohol is really in that glass, and provide treatment for those who need it. Together, we can prevent more individuals from unknowingly putting themselves in harm’s way.